Are you watching the Olympics?

I'm not. And I feel kind of bad about that. Sort of un-American.

When I was a kid, we were glued to the TV whenever the Olympics were on. Absolutely rapt. I was never really interested in sports all that much, but I wouldn't dream of missing the Olympics when I was growing up. I think it was the ideal of world harmony that was appealing (remember, when I was a kid we were in the middle of the Cold War), as well as the foreign locale. You got to visit other countries through the human interest stories and learn a lot about the host country, too.

Nowadays, those things aren't enough I guess. That whole "world harmony" thing doesn't really have the same impact for me now that I'm grownup know how the world really works, and they've gone overboard with the human interest stories. They may have toned it down a bit this year, but the last time I watched the Summer Games, I couldn't BELIEVE the time given to stories about the athletes. Just show the race, for crying out loud! And stop talking!

Bob Sassone over at TV Squad lays it all out better than me.

Of his reasons, I think the one that is the biggest hinderance for me is the schedule. There's just way too much stuff, too many events on too many channels, to keep track of; I prefer the Winter Games - I think they're much more exciting - but even for those, my viewing has gone down drastically because keeping track of my favorite events is overwhelming.

I didn't even bother to watch the Opening Ceremony this year. It's hard to watch a celebration of Chinese culture, knowing their history of human rights abuse. Which is a shame, because it is an amazing culture.

I did see one small part of the Opening Ceremony, though - I landed on it while surfing the channels - and it was incredible. Apparently China does not want video of the opening ceremony distributed on the web (surprise, surprise), so this bad copy (blurry picture and the sound is off) will have to do:


via videosift.com

It must have been amazing to see that in person.

So, are you watching?